Songwriter says Ariana Grande’s ‘God Is a Woman’ was first eyed for Beyoncé and JAY-Z

Ariana Grande’s 2018 single “God Is a Woman” was first considered for a very different pair of artists, according to one of the people who wrote it. On an episode of the songwriting podcast “And The Writer Is…,” hosted by Ross Golan, the producer and songwriter Ilya Salmanzadeh said the track had initially been aimed at Beyoncé and JAY-Z before it found its way to Grande.

The idea, as Salmanzadeh described it, was that the song might suit the couple’s joint project, with the possibility of a rap feature built in. That plan changed in the room once Grande heard it.

“When we started again with Ari, we were thinking maybe it could be her singing the chorus, and we’d get a rap feature, but then when she heard the song, she was like, ‘No, we’re writing this for me.’”

How a song changes hands

Stories like this are less unusual than they sound. In modern pop, a song is often written before anyone has decided who will sing it, and strong material gets floated to more than one artist before it lands. The version the public hears is frequently the result of a specific person connecting with a track at the right moment — not a fixed destiny the song had from the start.

Salmanzadeh is credited as a co-writer and producer on “God Is a Woman” alongside Grande, Max Martin, Savan Kotecha and Rickard Göransson — a roster that reflects how collaborative that corner of pop is. His account is a reminder that the finished record is one outcome among several that were genuinely on the table.

Where the song ended up

“God Is a Woman” was released in July 2018 as part of Grande’s album “Sweetener,” and it peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It became one of the defining songs of that era for her, with a widely discussed music video and a sound that suited her voice so completely it is hard to picture it belonging to anyone else — which is, in a way, the point of the story.

The detail about the couple’s joint album is the kind of near-miss that fuels endless “what if” conversation among fans, and plenty of that followed the episode. But the more interesting takeaway is the ordinary one: this is simply how a lot of hits come together. A song is built, it is offered around, and then someone hears it and claims it. In this case the person who claimed it was Grande, and the result was a multi-platinum single that now seems inseparable from her.

CelebWire notes that the reference to the couple’s joint album is an inference drawn from the artists named on the podcast; Salmanzadeh spoke about Beyoncé and JAY-Z rather than naming a specific record. What is on the record, in his own words, is how quickly the song’s direction changed the moment Grande decided it was hers.